


Beautiful but Terrible

by Primarina (sherlockstummy)



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9247325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlockstummy/pseuds/Primarina
Summary: "Please, will you help me?"The Fae gave a haughty laugh. "Why should I help you?""Because you're not what you pretend to be," he said.





	1. Chapter 1

If you have heard that the Fae are beautiful creatures, that their magic is good and their ways just. If you believe that the stories of the Fae helping humans are true, then beware, for you are too faint of heart for the truth.

The Fae are warriors. They are terrible creatures who have played with human lives like chess pieces since the beginning of time. Any human who survives an encounter with the Fae will tell you of the horrors observed in their vile courts. They are wild, bacchanalian, and treacherous. Any human who would willingly seek them out is asking for death.

But the human race is full of fools. Perhaps this is fortunate for the Fenris and the dragons that haunt the shadows and prey upon tasty human flesh. Without fools, how would we know what not to do and where not to go?

All you need know is that the Fae created the land in the way that they wanted. Deep, dark forests and rolling hills and verdant valleys can be found across the continent. Oceans spread beyond the land for as far as the eye can see, filled with mysterious creatures and hidden treasures. This, the untold wilds of nature, the unimaginable depths where humans dare not go, is where the Fae reside. They tell their tales and conduct their courts, creating and destroying as is their wont. And even in all this, the humans managed to lay claim to parts of the heavenly world the Fae created for themselves.

The Fae had a great war once, a long time ago. These wars were terrible, and made the world into a much less habitable place than it once was. Their fighting created storms and unsettled the creatures of the world, turning them against each other, just as the Fae had done. And when the fighting was over, when the Fae were exhausted and ready to compromise, out of the settling dust came man.

And man built settlements in the sides of mountains, their crude hands making crude tools carved from the good earth, and they worshipped crude gods with crude sacrifices, never knowing if those gods were listening, but believing. And they were born, and they died, and they made laws and values for themselves.

And from their hiding spots, the Fae watched and waited and sure enough, humans made war, with crude weapons and crude tongues and crude squabbles over gods and land and herds of deer. The Fae decided that they would become better than the humans, and so the Fae courts were formed.

The reason that Fae are solitary creatures is because they cannot live in packs like humans. They are predators, and humans are prey, and predators do not need to hunt in packs, but prey stick together to keep an eye on each other. 

Perhaps there was a time, once, when Fae and humans could communicate civilly and live in peace side by side. The elder humans still tell stories of children playing with Fae caretakers, guided easily through the wild forest and kept safe from harm. But humans are greedy. They always want more. And when the humans began to take, the Fae fought back. 

Years passed. Humans forgot, but the Fae remembered. And the dark forests and high mountains and deep, dark oceans became unsafe for humans because the Fae remembered. And the Fae became tired of the way the humans forgot, because they could never forget.

If you grew up with stories of horrible, disfigured creatures spiriting away children in the night, and your dreams were haunted by dead-cold fingers dragging down your spine, and if you heard a moan or a creak and were frightened, or you were told never to leave your home after dark, now you know why.

The Fae may be beautiful, but they are terrible, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Aerin lifted his head, wiping the sweat from his brow. The sun was hot and burned into his back, his muscles aching from the strain. The head of his axe lay buried in a stump, the wood he’d chopped placed neatly beside him. As his heart stopped beating in his ears, Aerin became aware of the clucking of chickens pussy-footing around the yard. A sallow-eyed brown farm cat with matted fur and a wiry tail lazed on the rail of the wooden fence made to protect the chickens from foxes. The tail of a mouse hung from its lips and it gazed smugly at him, blinking its round eyes.

Aerin hmphed and ran his big hand over the cat’s small head, watching in satisfaction as the animal stretched into his touch, eyes closed, purring nasally. “I get to have breakfast soon, Moach,” he told the cat, “so don’t gloat over your lean mice just yet, buddy.”

“Mrraow,” replied the cat, the severed tail falling from its lips onto the ground. 

One of the chickens clucked at Aerin’s feet, thinking the tail was a worm. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” Aerin swiped away the tail from the chicken’s beak. “None of that for you! You’ll get fat before your time.” It made him think briefly of warm, cooked chicken, and his stomach growled like an angry dog. 

Every day was just the same; chop wood before breakfast, mend shoes before lunch, butcher chickens before dinner. Aerin was an odd job man, so his neighbors would sometimes come to him with special jobs, none of which he had been taught, all of which he taught himself.

Aerin’s family had been too poor to send him off to school. With his elder brother in the militia, it was either be locked away in some monastery far away by the endless sea, or take on a trade. Carpentry was the trade he’d learned at thirteen and mastered at eighteen, but in the years between then and now, he’d taught himself so much more. The world was full of trades to be learned, and with the numbers in his town dwindling, precious few to learn them.

The old man was too sick to work now, but his wife still did the housework. It was she who opened the old door that creaked on its hinges, making Aerin turn mid-stretch, startled.

“Breakfast is ready, Aerin.”

“Thank you.” Aerin bowed his head. He still believed in being respectful to his masters, even though the old tradesman was sick and dying and he was technically the master now. He left the cat to its own devices and made his way towards the house, side-stepping chickens on the way.

The tradesman’s house was a simple bungalow. It had four drafty walls and a basement that flooded every time it rained and an attic with a roof that leaked no matter what was done to repair it. A once-excellent guard dog had gone half-blind and mostly lame with age, but the bony old thing still wagged its tail as Aerin entered the dimly-lit kitchen. The house was cool, even in the hot summers, and as much as Aerin hated the bed that was too small for him and walking through ankle-deep water in the basement during monsoon season and snowmelt, this was home.

“Here you are.” The old woman smiled, crinkling her cheeks, as she placed a plate of hearty eggs and sausage before Aerin.

“Thank you,” Aerin said again before grabbing his fork and eagerly digging into the meal. The tradesman had taught him from a young age that food always tasted better after long hours of work and over time, Aerin had come to agree with him. “How is your husband today?”

The old woman sighed, her gray eyes staring but not seeing out the window. “I know I will lose him any day now. I have tried to be strong, Aerin, but it is hard…”

“I’m sorry.” Aerin left his plate for a moment and stood, crossing to her awkwardly. Beside her frail, petite form, he felt like a hulking giant, even afraid to touch her lest she crumble to dust before him.

The old woman smiled, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Perhaps one day, the gods of the valley will help me understand his passing. I can only hope that I won’t be sad anymore once his suffering is over.”

Aerin had never believed in any gods, though he had never been deprived of the knowledge of them in his years as a conscious human being. “I know. I wish there was something I could do…”

“He has asked for you.” The old woman turned. “You do not come.”

Aerin held back a deep sigh. The tradesman had begun to speak nonsense in his old age. The last time he had asked for Aerin, he had told him of a prophetic dream in which Aerin had entered the deep forests of Gaia to the east and brought back a Fae with eyes of darkest gold and a halo of curls to cure the curse that infected this land. 

He’d spent some time thinking about it, going over it time and again in his mind, even drawing what the Fae might look like on his deerskin paper, but he’d abandoned it eventually. It was the madness of old age and sickness, the sickness that takes everyone eventually. True, it had taken many, and many before their time, but Aerin could believe they were frail. There was no curse. 

“I will speak to him, Grandmother.” Aerin said obediently, trying his best not to sound exasperated.

The old woman lifted her gnarled hand up to brush a strand of hair from his cheek. “Thank you. I know he will be happy to see you.”  
Aerin returned to the table to finish his breakfast, his mind swimming with unease.

His greatest fear was as the old saying goes:

There is truth in madness.


	3. Chapter 3

Aerin stood before the old bamboo door, all of his nerves on fire. He couldn’t explain the sudden sick feeling in his stomach, the way his heart beat faster at the thought of seeing the old man, of hearing his mad prophesies.

He wouldn’t be quite so afraid if the tradesman had always been like this, but he had not. The old man had been as tough as nails, barely cracking a smile, always dismissive of his wife’s belief in the gods of the valley, always grunting: “I’ve been in and out of that valley and never seen no gods.” Aerin had to admire him for never putting a lick of stock into anything he couldn’t use his own senses to puzzle out.

That’s why the prophetic dreams were surely madness. Had to be madness. And the old sayings of the wise old sages could be wrong. They were just old wives’ tales, something to say when a child was born at the witching hour, or a story to tell when little boys and girls misbehaved, or to scare away strangers from an old property. Aerin couldn’t use his senses to puzzle them out, so they didn’t have to be true! …Right?

Aerin took a deep breath and turned the knob on the door, his nose immediately assaulted with the dank smell of mildew and sick. Ignoring the sharp jolt in his stomach (he really should have waited until he’d digested his breakfast), he stuck his head around the door into the room. “You wanted to see me, Grandfather?” 

The old man turned his head towards the door, movements stilted like poorly oiled clockwork. His eyes were white and nearly unseeing and he looked small and frail in the bed, muscles wasted away with illness and age. He licked his lips before speaking, his voice raspy. “Yes…come…here…Aerin…”

Aerin approached the bed and sat down awkwardly on the low stool beside it. The light coming in through the small window high above the bed was made sallow by the curtain covering it, the gentle breeze lifting dust off the sill. He could watch it gather in the room. Aerin hunched over, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, as he waited for the tradesman to speak.

“The dreams…” The old man rasped. “There is an urgency there now that was not there before. You must find the Fae in the forests of Gaia. You must help these poor people.”

Aerin sighed, looking at the floor. He could feel the hairs of his ponytail brushing aggressively against the back of his neck, the tips hardened from sweat. “You say that all the time, Grandfather.”

“And yet you do not seem to hear me say it.” The tradesman’s voice came out harsh and rough, and Aerin’s attention jolted back to him. It was not a tone Grandfather used often with him. In fact, he had not heard the tone since his last punishment, almost a decade ago now. That voice replaced the sound of a wooden paddle in his mind, and always aroused in him a dread for the stinging pain in his backside. “Aerin, I may be old and sick, but my senses have not yet left me.”

Aerin hung his head. “Yes, Grandfather.”

“I…see…” The tradesman’s voice became distant again, but this time, Aerin listened respectfully. “A soft spot, in the woods, with grass as soft as goose down and air as sweet as sugarcane. There are Fae still that love us. There are Fae still who will help us. One, just one, to be placated and won.”

“Grandfather…”

“The curse,” the tradesman went on, “is slow to rise. It hides in the meat of chickens and comes to us as quietly as mice. The skies will cloud at midday and the rain will burn the crops to the ground. The strongest militia man cannot fight it, nor can the valkyries, though they may try.”

“Grandfather…”

“And when the moon is a rib bone for one day too long, all will be lost for all mankind.”

Aerin lifted his head as the tradesman sputtered out an uneven breath. With a wheeze like a deflated pig-gut ball, the old man drew his last breath and died.

Respectfully, Aerin kissed his hand and rose from the stool, covering the body with a sheet. Soon, his body would be burned, and scattered among the flowers of the valley, and Aerin would have time to no longer be haunted by his dying words.

That is, until the day he cut open a healthy chicken to find insides as gray as stone, stomach contents as black as soot. 

He found Moach, dead, the day after, pink tail of a mouse hanging from its lips. And a voice whispered cunningly like wind in his ear:

It has begun.


	4. Chapter 4

Aerin waited for the cover of darkness to set out from the town. Now that he had decided to acknowledge that the curse was real, he was disturbed to find that the death that had hit him the hardest was of the farm cat, Moach. Moach had never taken a liking to anyone before Aerin, and he was as old as the property, so Grandmother said.

Aerin set his heavy pack on the bed with a grunt. The canvas rucksack had seen better days, the watery green fabric unevenly faded, eaten through by moths and cat claws. He’d had it since he was a child, the last of his life before he’d been sent away. Such is the life of a poor child; he hardly remembered what his parents or brother looked like, only that he had them to speak of. Children are so often the victims of poverty.

He checked the contents one last time. A few wooden and stone tools necessary for his journey, a bit of cavalry bread (so called for its widespread use in the militia and among valkyries, the female branch of the militia), spare arrows for his bow, a pair of wool gloves and a sheepskin scarf to protect against the cold. After much debate, he also placed his deerskin journal and a blanket into his rucksack. With a heavy sigh, he pulled it on over his shoulders, grabbed his bow and quiver, and quietly made his way down the familiar stairs, mindful of course to watch the third and seventh stair that creaked.

The dog weakly wagged its tail at him, and Aerin patted the creature’s bony head. “I’ll be back,” he whispered, hoping that the words of comfort he spoke where the truth, not just for his own sake, but for the sake of the town that needed him.

He didn’t know what to expect from a rendezvous with Fae. Surely he expected the greatest horrors one could imagine, due to the tales he’d heard growing up. 

The Fae live in the dark. The Fae eat children. The Fae steal good earth and make harvests fail. The Fae curse the humans for fun. The Fae war against themselves to bring about Ragnarok.

Humans didn’t dare go out at night, fearing the mysterious and malevolent creatures that lurked in darkness. The streets of the town were as silent as death, and Aerin heard the padlock on his own gate like the boom of far-off fireworks.

Only the Midnight Man, in charge of lighting the lamps at night to keep dark spirits and curses away, would be out at this time of night, leading his little donkey cart that carried the oil for the lamps. Except the Midnight Man was a woman, and Aerin had never met her. He just knew of her, for Midnight Men were wealthy people. It pays to risk your life to protect the fools that others be.

The lights in front of him were not yet lit, giving Aerin pause. The dark had always scared him, as it should any sensible man, and he was scared to go out into the endless black sea of night that stretched out even beyond what he could reach out and touch. Aerin shivered in the night air, and he was near to quitting when the clatter of hooves startled him.

It was the Midnight Woman, Suzaline. She was dressed rather imposingly in heavy, black boots with chains that rattled with every step and pointed spikes on the heel and toe. A black satin cloak covered her body, the hood drawn up so that only her painted, pale face showed, it seeming to glow with an ethereal light. She wore a black dress of ghostly fabric that was nearly transparent in some areas and completely so in others, giving her the appearance of the undead.

Despite this, the way that she gently and lovingly coaxed her donkey along with soft voices and gentle pats belied a different personality than the one she presented to the world. Her cart stopped at the lamp across the street, and Aerin leaned on his gate to watch her work.

Suzaline, softly singing to herself, lifted a flask from her donkey’s cart. Scratching the animal behind its pointed ears, she climbed up onto the fence of a nearby house and stood up, balancing carefully and holding onto the sides of the lamppost to maintain her position. Carefully lifting the lampshade off, she poured the flask within, and a light started by magic, burning incandescent and gentle rainbow light which poured like water onto the street below. Satisfied, she jumped down with a soft grunt and looked up, seeming to notice she had a guest.

“Hello!” Her voice tinkled like an enchanted bell, and she smiled kindly.

“Hi,” Aerin said shyly. Being a tradesman, he rarely had time to converse, and it was not a skill he was trained in. He could ask about and compliment clothing, but beyond that, he was hopeless socially. 

“Where are you going this time of night?” Her voice had a musical quality to it, almost like the lilting voices of long-dead ghosts.

“I, uh,” Aerin bit his lip and looked down at his feet. “I, um…there is a curse that must be broken. I have been…chosen. I guess.”

“Ah!” Suzaline’s eyes lit up with a strangely inhuman fire. She began to advance, pulling her donkey along with her. “Then you must be Aerin, the tradekeeper’s boy!”

“Well,” Aerin blushed, still unable to meet her gaze, “not so much a boy, but…”

“Yes! It is you my father spoke of!” Suzaline tilted her head so that she was looking at him. “You came from a faraway land. Yes, of course you did! There are not many who travel far from their birth clans.”

“I guess not.” Aerin shrugged. “I’m…it all seems so impossible to me, though. I mean, a curse?” He snorted. “It only happens in children’s tales!”

“You say that,” Suzaline frowned, “but you believe it is real. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The way it comes in mice and ash-grey meat.”

Aerin nodded, somewhat begrudgingly.

Suzaline nodded in turn. As she removed her hood, he caught a glimpse of her long, dark hair, streaked with a single strand of blonde. The mark of a Midnight Man…or Woman, as the situation would have it. “My father spoke of it. The Fae have been dormant for years, but there are broods of restless ones along the rivers and lakes to the north that cause trouble in the human towns there. I did not think it would come here so quickly. There must be one upsetting the balance in these parts.”

“You speak of the Fae as if you have seen them.” Aerin tilted his head at her in confusion and disbelief.

Suzaline laughed softly. “Will you walk? I must work.”

“Of course.”

Suzaline clicked to her donkey, and Aerin walked beside her as they traveled on. “It’s because I have. Seen the Fae.” She smiled, her eyes glazed over as she looked ahead, seeing nothing. “All Midnight Men and Women must see them. There are families of us that even claim to be partially Fae, though the truth of that is hard to prove. If one thing is true, it is that the Fae do not like us.” She turned to Aerin. “You must be careful. If the old man’s words were truth, then I know of the Fae you must seek.” She paused at the base of a lamp, and Aerin helped her up onto the fence, feeling how cold her hands were, and admiring how she could touch the heat and still feel chilled after. 

“Oh, right,” Aerin hummed. “A Fae with dark gold eyes and curly hair.”

Suzaline giggled. “That is about the sum of what is known. The Fae keep their royalty well sheltered.”

“Royalty?”

“He is a prince, though perhaps not a willing one. He seeks to rule not lands, and squanders his title. So it is said.”

“Have you seen him?”

“For a human, even the Midnight People, to lay eyes on a Fae prince, they would have to be foolish indeed!” Suzaline put a hand on his arm and squeezed tightly. “I think, however, that you may do just that.”

Aerin was certain he’d been called a fool in perhaps the most beautiful way possible. “Thank you…?”

Suzaline giggled again. “In faith,” she said gently, her eyes watching his with the greatest of concentration, “it is fools who pave the way for us all to follow.” She stood on tiptoe and pressed cold lips against his cheek. “This is as far as I can go,” she whispered. “Be safe, little fool.”

Aerin blinked, and he was alone, facing the high gate that led out of the town. Beyond it, the great woods stretched high and mighty, the tops of the trees brushing against the sky. A cold wind blew from the forest, and Aerin touched his cheek, feeling the strange icy burn of where Suzaline’s lips had touched him.

So she had called him a fool. But…was her kiss to bless him, or doom him?

Aerin didn’t have time to puzzle out the ways of the Midnight Woman. With a final deep breath that surely felt like his last, Aerin opened the gate of the town, and went out into the woods beyond.


End file.
